Scott Loarie

Scott Loarie, Ph.D., is Executive Director and co-founder of iNaturalist, the world's largest citizen science platform, operated jointly by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. He reimagined the original mission launched in 2008 by Ken-ichi Ueda, leading iNaturalist to achieve millions of observations and become an essential tool for global biodiversity monitoring.

He earned a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Biology from Stanford and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Policy from Duke, where he specialised in species distribution modelling and climate change impacts. He conducted research at the Carnegie Institution for Science and taught at UC Berkeley, focusing on the impact of climate change on diverse ecosystems.

Since 2011, he has led iNaturalist as an independent organisation, promoting collaboration between users, scientists and global communities. Through technological innovations, such as the AI algorithm and the Seek app, he has scaled up citizen participation, reaching more than 20 million observations and contributing to more than 400 scientific publications using its database.

Among his awards are the Heinz Award for the Environment in 2024 and his appointment as a Fellow of both the California Academy of Sciences (as Patterson Scholar) and the National Geographic Society.